That will depend on how strong the tobacco smell is, but Sunlight seems to do pretty good at removing strong smells like this. There is a sandwich chain restaurant here named Firehouse Subs, and they get dill pickles in some red 5 gallon plastic pails that are stronger than the white pails of similar design. Although these pickle pails are great and can be bought from these restaurants used, for just $2 each, the strong smell of the dill pickles seems to stay in the pails through most every attempt to remove it. I found that leaving the empty pails out in the Sunlight, open, with their lid lying next to them with inside facing up toward the Sun removed the dill pickle smell in about 2 days. So my suggestion would be to open these up and lay them on the lawn for a day or two of bright Sunlight to see if that works for you.
Another experience, this time with tobacco and house fire smoke - I once collected and rebuilt old antique jukeboxes, many of which had spent their years in smoky bars and pubs. For these, I found that refrigeration coil cleaner diluted about 50/50 with water and sprayed onto the surfaces, then wiped off with paper towels worked better than anything else that I had tried. This seems like the better suggestion, but I have no idea what harm this mix might have on your backgrounds, so it would be best to test this on one that can be trashed if it causes problems. I used this same cleaner on an octagon shaped end table, cleaning both inside and out several times, then letting it dry thoroughly before applying a wax protectant. This table had been in a furniture store fire near where I lived, and I almost bought it before the fire, then saw it again while helping to fight the fire (I was a fireman at the time). It had been located in the opposite end of the store from the fire, but had received a very heavy dose of heat and smote/soot. A lamp shade made from plastic had melted and dropped all over the table top too. After the store owner had settled with his insurance company, he had a sale of everything that wasn't actually burned and this table was in this sale. It had been priced for nearly $300 before the fire, but because of the plastic drips on it's top, he was only asking $25 for it. I am a woodworker as well as photographer, so decided to take a chance and see if I could clean up and fix the table. The melted plastic from the shade just popped off of the table top, and then several cleanings inside and out with this refrigeration coil cleaner and a few days out in fresh air and Sun cleaned the table up almost perfectly. It has been in my living room for the last 50 years with no smoke smell coming from it.
You should be able to buy the coil cleaner wherever refrigeration supplies are sold. It's a yellow color, and very strong/hard on the skin, so wear rubber gloves. It works best at the 50/50 mix with water, and it does not do as well if you try to make it work better at different stronger or weaker percentages, and it didn't harm any of the plastics, varnish, or paint. Here, they sell a cleaner called 409 that is similar, but much weaker. Depending on how bad this smoke smell is, the 409 cleaner might work, but in large amounts, you will save money by buying the refrigeration coil cleaner and diluting it with water to the 50/50 mix. This mix will work better too.
Charley
